The headline on this disc is the programming. Not since a few choice entries in Sol Gabetta’s Il Progetto Vivaldi series has a baroque cello recital arrived with a genuinely interesting argument threaded through it — and this one, assembled by cellist Hanna Salzenstein after long months of archival research, has both an intellectual through-line and the musical goods to back it up. The concept: trace the emergence of the cello concerto from its Bolognese origins in Domenico Gabrielli through the post-Vivaldian generation, documenting a largely uncharted territory in which the instrument was still negotiating its own identity.
Salzenstein is a core member of Le Consort, the Parisian ensemble that has made archival rediscovery something of an artistic signature. The accompanying orchestra — Le Consort expanded to concerto-scale forces under the shared direction of Justin Taylor, Thibaut Roussel, and Albéric Boullenois — is polished and responsive. Recorded at the Église Évangélique Allemande in September 2024 in spacious Dolby Atmos sound, the disc has a clean, well-balanced bloom that serves the chamber-orchestra textures well.
The three world-premiere recordings are the genuine surprise here, and they confound the usual suspicion that unfamiliar Baroque concertos are curiosities more interesting in description than in performance. The anonymous Venetian concerto, sourced from the Bibliothèque nationale de France on three-moon Venetian manuscript paper, is a particularly fine find: thunderous orchestral writing in B-flat major, stark rhythmic contrasts, and a slow movement of disarming tenderness. It sounds like Vivaldi at his most concentrated — asymmetries, obsessive rhythmic cells, maximum effect from minimal materials — and it makes you want to hear it again immediately. Giovanni Benedetto Platti’s unpublished concerto in D major is the other standout, a work of sunny, almost pastoral serenity in which the solo cello converses with the violins across an unusually expansive slow movement. The writing is simple, even ingenuous, but the emotional clarity is real.
The Vivaldi concertos themselves are well chosen — RV 401 in C minor has a dark, inward character quite distinct from the familiar RV 400, which is more majestic and rhetorical — and they sit comfortably in the programmatic narrative rather than dominating it. Giorgio Antoniotto’s concerto from the Library of Congress has an engaging character of its own, its finale a dancing minuet with a charming added bassoon-and-cello duo that Antoniotto apparently revised on the final pages of the manuscript: a small human detail that the program notes illuminate well. The solo interludes — caprices by Giuseppe Maria dall’Abaco and a ricercar by Niccolò Sanguinazzo — provide breathing room and remind you how far back the cello’s independent voice reaches.
One honest caveat: Salzenstein and Le Consort play with elegance and genuine emotional restraint, and while this suits the Platti and some of the more intimate Vivaldi slow movements well, there are moments — particularly in the bolder tuttis of the anonymous concerto and the RV 400 — where you sense the music pressing against the ceiling and not quite breaking through. The performances are refined and thoughtful throughout, but they occasionally stop short of the kind of visceral engagement that would make the fast movements truly electrifying.
The printed liner notes are another matter. Olivier Fourès’ essay and Salzenstein’s own introduction are lively, intelligent, and worth reading — but only in the original French. The English translation is a serious editorial failure, riddled with misconstructions that render passages meaningless, and it falls well below the standard the music deserves. Read the French if you can, or track down a better rendering before the editorial team address it.
My Favorite Moment
The anonymous Venetian concerto’s second movement — a Largo affetuoso in what the manuscript simply marks largo — is the kind of slow movement that makes you put down whatever you’re doing. There’s a particular moment where the solo cello, after the orchestral strings have set up a quietly aching harmonic bed, drops into its lowest register with a phrase of almost vocal simplicity. Salzenstein holds it without hurry, letting the line breathe, and for a few seconds the identity of the composer feels entirely irrelevant. Whoever wrote this knew exactly what they were doing.
Comparisons
For a Vivaldi cello concerto set with more extrovert energy and an equally persuasive archival instinct, Sol Gabetta’s Il Progetto Vivaldi (Sony Classical, 2007) with I Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca remains hard to beat as an introduction to the repertoire. Gabetta’s gut-string playing has a fieriness and momentum that Salzenstein largely forgoes; the two sets make an instructive pairing.
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For a close-up view of what Le Consort sounds like at full expressive throttle, Théotime Langlois de Swarte’s Concerti per una vita (Harmonia Mundi, 2022) — a double disc of Vivaldi violin concertos with the same ensemble — shows the orchestra in a more combustible mode, and it makes an interesting companion to this disc.
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